


run out of road

by Ahavaa



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25520005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ahavaa/pseuds/Ahavaa
Summary: the best thing about time travel is that none of this happened (except the parts that did)
Relationships: Barry Allen/Eobard Thawne | Harrison Wells, Barry Allen/Iris West
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	run out of road

_We're here, again, in the disastrous past, a different country, and they do things differently there._

__

__

_You've seen the blood. Do you really need the details? Be polite. Leave, now: you've already made the correct assumptions. Be polite._

_(If you can't be polite:)_

"You and Hartley seemed...close," Barry said. It'd been a long day, and he was exhausted, too tired to go home and sleep, too tired to be discrete. 

Dr. Wells gave him a level, appraising look. Took off his glasses. Met his eyes. 

That wasn't great. Barry already regretted the question. It was embarrassing, and rude, and--

\-- oh god, he was _right_ , oh no. This conversation had suddenly gotten much worse. 

"You're better than tabloid innuendo, Mr. Allen," Dr. Wells said, instead of reminding him to respect boundaries. "And you know I am an open book, to you. If you have a question, ask it." 

The right question was "I'm sorry for speculating about your personal life, there's a robbery," and fleeing the scene, but Cisco or Caitlin or god forbid Dr. Wells would probably...check. He was going to vibrate out of his skin. So. 

"I just. Iris -- I want her to be happy. And you. With Tess. You know what it's like to lose the one person you would be happy with. But you. And Hartley? It just seems like you found...something else." Barry didn't have the words to ask th3 question, fumbling through it. " I don't know how to do that. How did you--" 

"Yes," Dr. Wells said. Laughed, a little, the way people do when they're miserable. "Well. I suppose it was obvious -- Hartley wears his grievances on his sleeve, after all. I take it you mean to ask me how I turned a professional mistake, a professional cruelty, into a personal one?" 

"You're not a cruel man," Barry said, because it was true, and there was grief on Dr. Well's face. 

"Hartley is a genius," Dr Wells said. "To answer the question you still haven't asked: I found a rare gem, and I recruited him, and in my astounding arrogance I took him to bed and ignored his good advice, and now he hates me. Rightly, in retrospect." 

He frowned into empty space. 

"I'm a cripple, and seventeen people are dead. I can admit that I lack wisdom in affairs of the heart, Mr. Allen." 

"You didn't do it out of cruelty," Barry said, because he hoped that it was true. Saying it might make it be true, after all. 

Dr. Wells looked at him, plain and spare, breathtakingly honest: "I didn't mean to be cruel," he said. "But I was. Now I know that I can be weak, when my ambition and my heart are at odds." 

_It's later, and we're still in the past, and it is still unkind of you to observe, when you already know how it's going to end:_

"This isn't weakness," Barry said. "I -- you always listen to me, Dr. Wells. You know me." 

He smiled, tight and concerned, but still so breathtakingly fond, still so ready to guide Barry through his colossal mistakes. 

"I shouldn't be anyone's north star," he said. 

Barry took a brilliant millisecond to consider it, and the ramifications, and kissed him. 

It was surprisingly sweet, unsurprisingly gentle: Barry had expected teeth, a defense of the disaster: he got an answer, an apology. It was a kiss, and everything that entailed -- Wells had chapped lips and his aftershave had faded into something a little bitter -- and more: the next move in a conversation that they'd been having for months. 

It disoriented him. 

"I appreciate the compliment," Dr. Wells said, finally. Gently, close to Barry's mouth. His hand hot on Barry's jaw, holding him back. _Caution,_ Barry heard, _restraint_ , but not _no_. This wasn't a _no_. When he opened his eyes, they shone light, pupils blown, and (as always, whenever he looked at Barry) he looked -- fascinated. "Barry Allen." He took a breath. 

It looked, to Barry's eye, like his whole body quaked with it. 

"You will never stop surprising me. You shouldn't do this." 

"A mistake shouldn't be who you are," Barry said. Please, he thought. The weird shit, the suspicious shit: please don't let it be true. There's an explanation for this, there has to be an explanation for this. Cisco loves you, Caitlin loves you. You've kept me alive this long, please, trust us, tell us the truth. 

"You are heartbreakingly young," Dr. Wells said. Calmly, like he was recording Barry's temperature or V02 levels. 

"But you trust me," Barry said, because he was sure of _that_ , and the hand on his face, the one holding him back, that went sweet and soft, just for a moment. Caressed the hinge of his jaw, and that feeling, that hot treasured feeling, it was back. 

"That I do," Dr. Wells said, a little wryly, a little ironic, but when Barry kissed him again, Barry wasn't the one who used teeth. 

_The future is a different country, one we know: it's trembling, waiting to unfold:_

Cisco had been there, when they crippled Thawne for long enough to get the meta dampening cuffs on him. 

Iris had been at her dad's house, with Nora. Wally had been been there, calm, steady, the only one in the house not shivering with nerves, waiting for the punchline. Her dad had insisted, because who knew why the Reverse Flash had shown up _now_. Even if Barry was still missing, odds were good that he had nothing good in mind for any of the Barry's old friends or family. The future is never kind to any of them; they keep falling for it, and it's always crueler than they've expected. 

Iris watched Nora scream in joy and jump on Wally's back, and thought about how Cisco and Caitlin had gone miserably quiet, how her dad had herded Iris and Nora to shelter, all over the one speedster Barry had truly hated, and she felt sick. 

"He needs to get some new lines," Cisco said, later, in disgust. His arm was broken, and they'd given him painkillers before he'd stopped by Joe's house to check in. An inch of his hair had been scorched in the final confrontation, and Cisco hadn't stopped fuming yet. Iris was still delicately attempting to fix the damage. "I sure do love being evil, Cisco! Great to see you, Cisco! Not sorry I killed you, Cisco, I'm still responsible for your great _destiny_ , Cisco" -- forget that, apologize for my _hair_ , you dick." 

"It'll grow back," Iris said, fighting the laugh. It was a good day, a solid win: Eobard Thawne behind bars and Nora none the wiser, and -- for once -- no one half dead with grief or guilt or shame, everyone breathing, everyone alive. 

Cisco met her eyes in the mirror. It looked like he'd been thinking the same way she had, because he said: "Okay, not to ruin a pretty awesome day, but he wanted to see you. You to visit him, I guess. I'm only telling you because it's Thawne, if I didn't tell you I bet he has another, worse way of asking you, but I'm saying: don't. He doesn't know anything about when Barry will come back and if he _did_ he wouldn't tell us, so no, actually. Pass, and I think you should too. We've had enough mentally scarring "conversations" with that psycho." 

Iris snipped another half inch of charred hair into the sink. "It's been ten years," she said. Slow. Careful. Cisco loved his hair, after all. 

"Was that doubt? Was that _doubt_? You trust me so little you're thinking we'd go with anything the _Reverse Flash_ gave you, never been so insulted, Iris." 

"I trust you," she said. Seriously, now, because Cisco is the one who stands with her (yells with her) when they have the yearly, nightmarish conversation about whether it's time to give in, fill out the paperwork. Make it official. 

Put the empty wooden box in the ground. 

"I'm just saying. How many times are we gonna keep kicking the football because this time Thawne promises he's being straight with us?" 

"Garfield!" Iris said, smiling, and Cisco jerked a little, the same smile blooming on his face, sweet and healthy and alive, pointing at her reflection in the mirror with his good hand. 

"I know you do this on purpose, Mom Flash - oh, that was terrible, first draft, I'll come up with something better - don't change the subject. Don't see Thawne."

 _So we forget the past: we can repeat it._

Cisco is right, Iris reminded herself, years later. 

Cisco is right, and Cisco is right, and finally Nora was thirteen, and Nora was screaming, screaming that her father was dead, obviously dead, when would Iris let him go? When would she let him rest? 

Her daughter called her selfish, and her daughter called her deluded, and Nora West-Allen was the only piece of her husband that Iris could still see or touch, here, in this lonely, bloodless future. Barry had been angry with her, dismissive, too sure of himself, but he'd always believed her. He'd always trusted her. 

Her daughter didn't trust her. 

She did her makeup carefully. 

She dressed slowly, carefully: her skirt was dark and conservative. It was too on the nose to wear an undershirt and a sweater, like Barry had, but she wore a white camisole and a blue blouse with a deep v neck, exposing the neckline of that camisole. 

She was in her forties, now, and her husband had been gone for thirteen years, and nothing they'd tried had brought him back to them. 

She went to the cell. 

Eobard Thawne had the starving eyes of prisoners who'd been in solitary confinement. 

He looked at her like she was the answer to his prayers (bad: his prayers should never be heard) and like he'd just discovered a new insect and was prepared to name it (also bad: he was a sociopath). 

"You wanted to see me," she said, because that was easiest.

"Iris West-Allen," he whispered, and she fought the urge to tell him to talk like a normal goddamn human being. 

She hadn't seen Barry in thirteen years. Cisco would never admit it, but he was out of ideas. 

So she said "Yes." 

"Congratulations," he said, and it terrified her, because the next words out of his mouth were "Remember that _every_ daughter is a gift, Iris," and. If she could have slapped him. She'd never felt the killing rage he could inspire so easily in Barry, not once, and she'd always been glad for it. That rage had always frightened her, but this. This -- this felt like a different animal, wild and bloody and immediately attuned to the problem. It could have driven a hand through Eobard Thawbe's chest. 

"How do we bring Barry" _home_ "back," she asked. 

"Oh," he said. His hands were visible, high on his chest, and his face was -- kind. Sympathetic. In short, it was _total bullshit._

She said, "You know how to get Barry West-Allen back." Like an order. Like a prayer. It had been _thirteen years_.

"No;" he said, and his face was as naked as hers. "Iris. He doesn't come back." 

"You're a liar," she said. 

"Never to a widow," he argued, and 0h. That was vicious, a direct hit. 

" _No_."

"Your bed has been cold for thirteen years -- I know. I understand, my bed has been cold since he knew who I was, but if I can bear it then I know you can survive this, Iris West-Allen."

It wasn't right. It wasn't kind. Laughing in the face of their enemy is stupid, childish, but she couldn't help it. It hiccupped out of her, but his face didn't change, and his face didn't change, and Thawne wasn't the kind of man who'd let people mock him. And that was fine, because _she could see through his bullshit_. 

He wouldn't let _Iris_ mock him. 

"You can't believe I'd think that Barry would _sleep with you_ , are you insane?" 

She couldn't read his face, under the harsh florescent prison lighting. 

It didn't matter, because he was always and fundamentally a liar, and who knows why he was telling this nonsense lie, the one no one would believe about _Barry_ , but she couldn't read his face. 

And it was insulting, it was horrifyingly insulting, because Barry _gave her a ring_ , Barry _took her name._

But Thawne looked at her like he knew her grief, and she hated him for it. 

"We'll get him back," she said. "We don't need you, _he_ doesn't need you. You watch. We've beaten you before. You always lose." 

"I went to see Thawne," she tells Cisco. 

"Don't worry, I can fix this," he says. "It was dumb, I _told_ you, but I have vodka." 

"He tried it," she confessed. Later. Much later, after Cisco's vodka had't fixed the situation. Cisco hadn't relaxed. "What did he try?" he asked, and Iris had the blind sense memory of falling, swooping into zero g without a parachute. "Nothing," she said. "It's nothing, he --" and she could say it, easily, but Cisco was so anxious. About nothing, obviously. 

"He implied that he -- he and _Barry_ , together," Iris said, and it was important that Cisco laugh with her, call it ridiculous, let the whole idea float into a madman's fantasy.

Cisco didn't respond for five seconds, and when he did, Iris wanted to hold him close, because he was lying for her: "That's crazy, Iris," he said, but his face was still shattered. _What_ had happened to them, to make them so hurt, in that first year? 

Two years later, she admits that they've lost. 

Still. It's fine. Her daughter is powerless, and safe. 

_I told you: you already knew it ended badly._

**Author's Note:**

> yes I know this is just reworked comment yelling about time travel nonsense. yes I know still no porn, I'm struggling. 
> 
> yes I know in canon Iris accepts the death of her husband immediately and tells people the appropriate lies, but this is a little s5 au where she refuses to file paperwork because Barry has always, always come back, and she knows that he _will_ come back eventually, and everyone is very kind to that West-Allen widow living in denial. Iris is practical. She uses her resources, even the bad ones, and this is the worst resource, but eventually it got bad enough to explore.


End file.
